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23 February 2014

Masopust: upping our village credentials

Over the past two weeks, we attended not one, but two masopust parades. [Google helpfully translates 'Masopust' as 'Mardi Gras', which isn't a terrible translation.]

The first Masopust was last weekend in the lovely district of Suchdol. [Bing helpfully translates 'Suchdol' as 'San Diego', which is a truly terrible translation.]

What Suchdol lacks in palm trees, it made up for in horns, accordions, people on stilts, cleverly home-made costumes, and sheer otherworldliness. There were also a surprisingly large number of English speakers attending, and L. laughingly commented that Suchdolsky Masopust would surely be featured in at least five 'My First Year in Prague: Aren't the Czechs Peculiar?'-style blogs.

As a result, I have avoided writing about it.

However, yesterday, was our village's very own masopust, and I cannot not mention it because, you see, the village came to our very own house.

It went like this: the strange collection of musicians, be-costumed people, on-lookers, and TV crew started off at the local pub.

The parade wound its way through the village, holding up cars along the way (literally - with plastic guns) and demanding donations. Donations of food and drink were also proffered at various houses along the way in exchange for a song or two from the band.

'I wonder,' L. mused idly as we strolled along, 'how one goes about getting selected to be visited by the parade?'

We decided there must be a pre-arranged list - and there probably is. However, I can also attest that the masopust parade will also stop at your house if you come flying out of your house with a few bottles of slivovice and a shot glass.

This might be what my dear husband did. I might have been excitedly snapping photos as the drums thumped, the horns tooted and the accordion wheezed melodiously right outside our very house.